Our man in Warszawa : how the West misread Poland

Written by a Brit who has lived in Poland for more than twenty years, this book challenges some accepted thinking in the West about Poland and about the rise of Law and Justice (PiS) as the ruling party in 2015. It is a remarkable account of the Polish post-1989 transition and contemporary politics, combining personal views and experience with careful fact and material collections. The result is a vivid description of the events and scrupulous explanations of the political processes, and all this with an interesting twist – a perspective of a foreigner and insider at the same time. Settled in the position of participant observer, Jo Harper combines the methods of macro and micro analysis with CDA, critical discourse analysis. He presents and interprets the constituent elements and issues of contemporary Poland: the main political forces, the Church, the media, issues of gender, the Russian connection, the much-disputed judicial reform and many others. A special feature of the book is the detailed examination of the coverage of the Poland’s latest two elections, one in 2019 (parliamentary) and the other in 2020 (presidential) in the British media, an insightful and witty specimen of comparative cultural and political analysis. Table of Contents 5 Foreword 7 Acknowledgments 11 How to Read the Book 15 Part I A Personal Voice 17 Chapter 1 Mr. Kaczyński, The Guardian and Me 17 Chapter 2 At Her Majesty’s Service! 37 Part II An Academic Voice 43 Chapter 3 Modern Poland’s Shifting Political Blocs 43 Chapter 4 Post-Post-Colonial? 67 Chapter 5 The Confused Hopes of “Civil Society” 81 Chapter 6 Class Struggles 89 Chapter 7 An Imported Middle Class? 97 Part III A Reporter’s Voice 105 Chapter 8 Election-Year Issues 105 Part IV A Lay Voice 129 Chapter 9 Diary of British Media Coverage of the October 2019 Parliamentary Election 129 Chapter 10 Hiatus—the Election that Wasn’t, May 2020 163 Chapter 11 Diary of British Media Coverage of Poland’s July 2020 Presidential Election 179 Chapter 12 Synthesis—Finding a Voice Between the Sublime and the Ridiculous 203 Index 213